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Roadster Still The Best Diner In Lebanon!

I was reading NoGarlicNoOnion’s latest post “Dear Roadster: Wake UP and Smell the Competition!” and felt compelled to answer some of the stuff mentioned in the post because I’ve been a Roadster customer for over 10 years now and I can easily say no diner comes close to Roadster in terms of cleanliness, customer service, delivery service and of course taste.

I’ve had some very rare bad experiences with Roadster, but it’s wrong and ridiculous to claim that they need to up their game due to one or two isolated incidents, specially when you look at their competitors.

Here’s what came in the post and my answers:

I ordered some food to the office today – they forgot the dips as well as the packs containing the forks and knives. I am at the office… how did they expect me to eat my salad? Use my hands? No salt, no wet wipes and the chewing-gum, forget about those, they stopped putting them in the paper bags a long time ago, although the word Clorets is still stamped on them.

I’ve been ordering food from Roadster for the past 7 years, and in the past 3 months 2 or 3 times a week and I only had one issue lately with a missing salad sauce once (They brought it back within 15 minutes) and not more than 5 issues throughout the years. I have a friend who orders Roadster almost daily to work along with a bunch of his colleagues and always praised their punctuality and service.

They once had an issue with the Delivery Center in Beirut due to high demand (which we reported) and they fixed it by setting up 7 lines or more I don’t remember. They have an impeccable delivery service and I am sure most Roadster customers agree with me.

As far as the visit to Zalka Branch is concerned:

The place is too noisy. I mean really noisy. Clinging sounds of forks and knives echoing all over the place, intertwined with a wave of customers’ voices topped with loud annoying music.

All Roadster branches are crowded on weekends, and I am sure they were even more crowded during the holidays. Loud music is almost always put on during weekends and on Friday nights as well. There’s nothing new here as a lot of teenagers and kids go to Roadster in the weekend or during the summer when there’s no school.

Too many waiters and honestly for nothing. Each one throws the responsibility on the other. We would ask one waiter for one thing he would go and ask another and then another… This incident repeated itself several times that night…

I always thought Roadster Zalka needed more waiters.

Service is extremely slow. It took waiters an extremely long time to deliver the drinks, and refills, we each had to ask at least three times to remind them of our drinks…

Just like any crowded restaurant, specially if you guys went during the weekend or holidays, service is a bit slower but despite that, I’ve rarely experienced slowness in the service at Roadster. It could have been a hectic day that’s all.

The food has changed. Honestly! Not to the better, but to the worse… Mozzarella sticks which used to come all in one size now come in different sizes, most of which are small. The nachos looked really poor. Hardly any cheese on the plate and chips were too little for the plate… empty spaces all over the place. The chicken strips, well, there was hair inside so we stopped there… the Cesar salad’s lettuce was yellowish… The fries are much less than the usual. A lot of orders came late, some ate while others watched…

I am not sure how frequently you guys to Roadster but nothing has changed in the food. I regularly go to the Jounieh Branch during week days, and on Saturdays for lunch to the Downtown Branch, as well as the Zalka branch and ABC branches from time to time and food is still as good as always.

The music played was heavy rock. I mean please, I am not that old… but seriously the whole ambiance was very annoying. I asked the waiter to lower the volume or change the music several times with no luck. This type of music does not fit the place… It’s excruciating… to say the least.

Again this is not something new and that’s why I avoid going to Roadster on Friday or Saturday night because it’s packed with youngsters and you can’t really blame Roadster for that.

Let me just add here that one of the very few restaurants that actually take into consideration your comments is Roadster and being a very picky customer myself, I never had a negative feedback following one of my complaints. On the contrary, they once even bothered to explain why they replaced their regular forks with tiny ones after I posted about it and then brought back the regular forks. Moreover, they also improved their buns after few complaints from loyal customers, among other things.

Social Media wise, the are more engaged than any other business and it showed in the latest Social Media Awards where they clinched two awards even though Crepaway was a sponsor of the event.

On a last note, I am not saying Roadster is the perfect diner but they’ve been more consistent than any other diner in Lebanon, and they’re known for being the cleanest diner in town as well. That’s why people are ready to pay the extra buck to go there.

What happened to “Together Forever”

Together Forever goes both ways. You can’t dump Roadster and rate the place with a 15 over 100 due to two isolated incidents after being a loyal customer for more than 10 years.

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16 thoughts on “Roadster Still The Best Diner In Lebanon!”

I ve been a loyal customer of roadster for more than 10 years now. I still enjoy it and everything but their prices are ridiculous, leave the competitors aside, prices are high! Being clean is the least required standards that they or any diner should offer, so it does not justify they charge higher! Moreover if they or others aren’t clean, they should simply be closed. If their raw material cost high, well they should make more effort to find alternative suppliers or have more bargaining power on their suppliers which I believe they easily have by now!

As said before the nachos portion is too small, but i would also like to ask the Roadster team to bring back the OLD Chicken stripes, the new one (crispy) are always overcooked, you can taste a burn flavor.

i really enjoy this blog but sadly most of the posts lately have became promotions for products, restaurants , cars…
we’re already saturated with daily bombardments of ads on our roads, tvs and social media
hope you will take this into consideration
cheers

Ii used to read your blog everyday, now all what i can find are stupid promotion posts, your efforts in hiding the promotions in what you call “reviews” is not working. Stop aiming at getting free meals from all the restaurants in Beirut, this is becoming pathetic !!!

I visited Roadster Zalka in January after being outside the country for 2 years.
Changes I noticed: price increase of 30% on whatever I ordered, the sandwich was noticeably smaller, the taste wasn’t the same, and I had to pay to get side fries (I’m not sure if the last one is a change)
Maybe the problem was that I had been to Crepaway 2 days before
But seriously, the person with me who had never tried any Lebanese diners before felt that Roadster was just another regular place and definitely not the best in Lebanon
It’s a matter of taste I guess, but maybe not being a regular customer shows the changes more clearly..

So I guess everyone that’s speaks highly of a restaurant is now getting paid by them. If that’s the case roadster would be broke by now cause there’s no one I know who speaks negatively about roadster.

Not at all. Dismissing someone’s criticisms because you’re happy isn’t unbiased either.
As a small example, excusing the slow and often faulty service at Roadster as “just like any other crowded restaurant” is not very objective.

The portion of fries is now very tiny.
why reduce the fries?
Roadster is getting greedy, as if all the branches and fame is not enough, they need to suck more money out of their clients.
A small portion of fries is never a good sign.
They turned from generous and tasty food to greedy bastards
This is the begining of the end for roadster…